ABSTRACT?CoordinatingUnit The goal of the Coordinating Unit is to coordinate all of the activities of the Southern African Regional Center of Non-Communicable Diseases Research Excellence (RCRE). Specifically, the Coordinating Unit will: 1) ensure that all collaborating partners have defined deliverables with associated well-described work plans as they relate to activities for RCRE start-up or ongoing functioning; 2) hold accountable all collaborating partners for agreed upon deliverables within the established time frames, overseeing routinely scheduled project management meetings and requiring monthly written performance reports from collaborating partners; 3) engage appropriate grant collaborators to ensure that applicable data and data systems are available or developed to carry out new areas of NCD research focus and that local researchers and subject matter experts are assigned to assist with carrying out the new areas of research; 4) provide grants management support to the RCRE to facilitate submission of grant applications and ongoing financial and regulatory reporting for awarded grants; 5) perform monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of the RCRE on a quarterly basis with dissemination of M&E reporting to grant collaborators and the grant sponsor; and 6) coordinate bi-annual partnership coordination meetings structured to review actual performance compared with proposed plan and adjust performance targets as needed. At project inception, the Coordinating Unit will be responsible for establishing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between all collaborating partners. The MOU will clearly define deliverables from each collaborating partner (including for shared facility cores located at given institutions) and include projected timeline of deliverables, as well as reporting requirements from each collaborating partner to the Coordinating Unit. The Coordinating Unit will initially be based at the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership (BHP), given existing administrative and research-related capacity that can be leveraged. As the RCRE grows in scope, the Coordinating Unit may be expanded with addition of full-time effort personnel, as well as possible capacitation and transition of the Coordinating Unit to University of Botswana Faculty of Health Sciences.